Instagram hashtag has superpowers. They can make your Instagram strategy or break them in a minute. When you utilize them correctly, you will get your posts seen by more people who interested in your brands or products.
By contrast, you can actually do damage your account, from annoying potential followers to get penalized by Instagram’s algorithm if you use the wrong.
To use the campaign effectively for Instagram hashtags, you need to understand exactly how they work and put some thought into a strategy.
You’re in the right place to do just that.
What you have to know about Instagram hashtag in 2020
What are Instagram hashtags?
A hashtag is a mix of letters, numbers, and/or emoji preceded by the # symbol (e.g., #LoveMyself). They’re used to categorize content and make it more discoverable.
Hashtags are clickable. Anybody who clicks on an Instagram hashtag or conducts an Instagram hashtag search will see a page showing all of the posts tagged with that hashtag.
Why use Instagram hashtag?
Hashtags are an effective strategy to develop your Instagram audience. If you use a hashtag, your post will be shown on the page for that hashtag. When you use a hashtag on your Story, it might be included in the relevant hashtag Story, which also appears on the hashtag page.
People could also select to follow hashtags, which means they might see your hashtagged post in their feed even when they don’t follow you (yet).
Instagram hashtags could be a good way of building a community online so people are motivated to interact with your brand. For instance, as the way people work out immediately changed in 2020, Nike Los Angeles used the #playinside hashtag to feature local people getting active in their homes.
Kinds of popular Instagram hashtag
Instagram breaks hashtags down into 9 distinct kinds:
- Services or products hashtags: These are primarily words to explain your services or products, like #clothing or #cake
- Niche hashtags: These get slightly more specific, showing what you fit in the context of your business, like #travelblogger or #foodblogger
- Industry Instagram community hashtags: Communities exist on Instagram, and these hashtags assist you to discover and join them. Think #gardenersofinstagram or #craftersofinstgram
- Special event or seasonal hashtags: These could refer to real holidays or seasons, like #summerdays, or they could be used for all these National [Thing] Day holidays, like #nationalicecreamday or #nationalnailpolishday
- Location hashtags: Even when you geo-tag your Instagram post, it could still be a good idea to include a hashtag that refers to your location, like #vancouvercraftbeer or #londoneats
- Daily hashtags: Every day has loads of its own hashtags, from #MondayBlues right through to #SundayFunday. We created a whole list of daily hashtags for you to select from when you’re looking for a simple source of hashtags to add to your posts.
- Relevant phrase hashtags: These hashtags mix elements of product hashtags, niche hashtags, and community hashtags. Basically, they are phrases people use on Instagram to connect to existing communities in a bare insider way, like #amwriting or #shewhowanders
- Acronym hashtags: Perhaps the best-known acronym hashtag is #TBT for Throwback Thursday. Other popular acronym hashtags include #OOTD for outfit of the day, #FBF for flashback Friday, and #YOLO for you only live once.
- Emoji hashtags: These hashtags could include symbols on their own, like #????, or words or phrases with emojis attached, like #sunglasses????.
How many hashtags on Instagram to use
You could add up to 30 hashtags on a normal post, and up to 10 hashtags on a Story. When you try to add more, your comment or caption will not post.
It’s said that just because you can use 30 hashtags for a Instagram post doesn’t mean you should. Actually, there’s no right quantity of hashtags for each business, or even for each post by the same business.
The consensus is that about 11 hashtags are good enough to start with. However, the most common number of hashtags to use on Instagram is between 1 and 3.
You might need to do some testing to find out what works best for your specific business.
How to hide hashtags on Instagram
If you’ve spent time crafting a great Instagram caption, you might not want to finish your post with a prominent collection of hashtags. Luckily, there are a few simple ways to make your hashtags less visible.
How to hide Instagram hashtags in a comment:
- Write caption as usual but don’t add any hashtags.
- Once your post is updated, simply click the speech bubble icon under your post to leave a comment.
- Write out or paste the hashtags you want to add in the comment box and tap Post.
- On mobile, your hashtags will not be visible unless a user taps View all comments. But on desktop, your comment will remain in the top position, so this trick works better when you are targeting a mobile audience.
Source: VW on Instagram
How to hide Instagram hashtags in the caption:
You could also use hashtags within the caption itself without them being super-visible.
- At the caption bottom, tap Return or Enter. When you don’t see a Return or Enter button, tap 123 to bring it up.
- Enter a punctuation mark (try a period, bullet, or dash), then hit Return again.
- Repeat steps 2 to 4 at least 3 times.
- Instagram hides captions after three lines, so your hashtags will not be viewable unless your followers tap … more.
How to hide captions on Instagram Stories:
You could hide hashtags on Instagram Stories, too. One option is simply to minimize the looks of your hashtags by pinching and shrinking them to make them quite small. You could also tap the hashtag sticker to change it from a white background to a semi-transparent one.
If you wish to hide your hashtags entirely, you could paste an emoji, sticker, or GIF overtop to obscure them.
Source: Christina Newberry
How to find trending hashtags on Instagram
Not like Twitter, Instagram doesn’t publicize a list of trending hashtags. But when you search for a hashtag on Instagram, you will see how many posts use that hashtag. You will also see a list of other popular Instagram hashtags utilizing similar words, with post counts included too.
Source: Instagram
If you want to search for a hashtag on desktop, just enter the hashtag adding the # symbol into the search box. With mobile, enter your search term in the search box, then tap Tags.
When you’re paying attention to your Instagram feed, you will learn to quickly spot trending hashtags as they emerge. Don’t be too quick to jump on a trend, tho. Only post utilizing a trending hashtag if it actually makes sense for your business, and for the particular content in your post.
How to search multiple hashtags on Instagram
The simplest method to search multiple hashtags on Instagram is to set up search streams in a social listening tool like Hootsuite to track the hashtags you are excited about so you could see all of the relevant content on one screen without having to conduct each one as an individual Instagram hashtag search.
Source: Hootsuite
Instagram business profiles could conduct up to 30 unique hashtag searches in any given seven-day period.
Top Instagram hashtags
As of June 1, 2020, these are the top 25 hashtags on Instagram:
- #love (1.824B posts)
- #instagood (1.143B posts)
- #fashion (807.1M posts)
- #photooftheday (792.4M posts)
- #beautiful (657.4M posts)
- #art (643.6M posts)
- #happy (576.9M posts)
- #photography (575.9M posts)
- #picoftheday (569.4M posts)
- #cute (564.9M posts)
- #follow (557.8M posts)
- #tbt (534.5M posts)
- #followme (526.4M posts)
- #nature (520.7M posts)
- #like4like (515.0M posts)
- #travel (494.6M posts)
- #instagram (475.6M posts)
- #repost (469.1M posts)
- #style (469.0M posts)
- #summer (452.4M posts)
- #instadaily (439.5M posts)
- #selfie (421.8M posts)
- #me (420.0M posts)
- #friends (395.8M posts)
- #fitness (393.8M posts)
Keep in mind that the most popular Instagram hashtags are not necessarily the most effective. You should choose some are suitable for your business!